The consumption of prescription medicaments is a routine activity in everyday life, but is also an activity in which a small mistake can have devastating consequences. A patient in need of a prescription medicament must trust that the doctor has prescribed a medicament that is safe for the patient and that the pharmacy has dispensed the correct medicaments at the proper dosage. The patient must further carefully consume the correct medicaments at the scheduled times in accordance with the prescription. When a patient has been prescribed more than one medicament at a time, the opportunity for human error to occur at some point in the process is greatly increased. The prescribing doctor may be unaware of a medicament that was prescribed for the patient by another doctor and may unwittingly prescribe a medicament that would trigger a dangerous drug interaction. An error at the pharmacy can result in the patient being dispensed the wrong medicaments. The patient, faced with having to consume multiple medicaments in confusingly similar encapsulations, may accidentally take too many of one medicament and experience an overdose, or may miss a vital dose altogether. Furthermore, there are the dangers caused by counterfeit medicaments making their way into the pharmaceutical supply chain, as well as the opportunity for improper or illegal usage of prescription medicaments by someone who is not the patient for whom the medicament was prescribed. There is a pressing need for a system that allows prescription medicaments to be safely prescribed, dispensed, and administered while also curtailing the dangers caused by counterfeit medicaments and illegal and improper consumption.
There are various devices in the prior art which attempt to address some of these problems. There are examples of smart pills within the prior art which are designed to prevent an overdose of a medicament. There are also devices for organizing medicaments and dispensing them to patients at predetermined times. Furthermore, there are existing systems which allow patient health information to be aggregated to assist in creating a coordinated medical treatment plan for a patient.
While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present disclosure as disclosed hereafter. The examples found in the prior art do not provide a unified system that can track medicaments and ensure that they are safely prescribed, dispensed, and consumed, while providing redundant safety checks at the dispensing and consumption levels.
In the present disclosure, where a document, act or item of knowledge is referred to or discussed, this reference or discussion is not an admission that the document, act or item of knowledge or any combination thereof was at the priority date, publicly available, known to the public, part of common general knowledge or otherwise constitutes prior art under the applicable statutory provisions; or is known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which the present disclosure is concerned.
While certain aspects of conventional technologies have been discussed to facilitate the present disclosure, no technical aspects are disclaimed and it is contemplated that the claims may encompass one or more of the conventional technical aspects discussed herein.